Blessedly, the interminable run for the White House is near its end. The serious business of governance soon resumes. Some wool-gathering on my part has yielded this intricate design of America’s future – as viewed between the ticks of the clock.
THE WAY WE WERE & WILL BE
AN ELECTION PARABLE
The two men stood together at the railing looking vacantly at the sea. Their lank black hair tousled by the breeze. They were father and son. Osman Mahsood Craddock and Helegu Ustad Craddock. The father half Tajik, the son half Kazakh quarter Tajik and quarter true-blue. They spoke in a creole compounded of Dari and Pushton with a strong infusion of Uzbek and Urdu words.
This was the first voyage for both to the ancestral country. They were heirs to five generations of imperial service in the American Empire in Asia. The Craddocks were descendants of General John ‘The Unforgiving’ Craddock, a member of the founding generation that had laid the empire’s foundations. The first Craddock’s service at Guantanamo, Mons and Miami had helped launch the historic enterprise. For more than a century, his descendants had been soldiers, administrators and court advisors – the ruling class in AEA. By now they were of Asia, not just in Asia. This was the fulfillment of the grand strategy conceived by Petraeus II, hereditary viceroy for the Oriental Realm, Operation Skandrani.
Helegu Ustad had had a caravan upbringing. Moving with his parents from one posting to another, he had studied at Imperial schools in Baghdad, Lahore,Isfahan and Alma Ata. He was a son of AEA – multilingual, and faithful. The first chords of the Imperial Anthem, “Steppes of Central Asia’ in the Kalilezad transcription, never ceased to send a shiver through him. The younger Craddock had always been too immersed in his studies, and indulging his passion for playing the electric sitar, to ponder his roots. Now, as he and his father sailed eastward across the north Pacific he felt a keen need to know where he came from.. He turned to his father for answers. Osman Mahsood studied history at Herat before yielding to tradition to follow the path laid out by his family 128 years earlier. He knew the whole tale.
The crucial dates were 2008 and 2009 – the 4 months that changed the world. It was the presidential election between John McCain and Barack Obama that was the watershed. On election night. Obama seemed to have won a clear victory in the Electoral College, even though it was a dead-heat in the popular vote. McCain refused to concede, however. Egged on by Cindy and Sarah, he pulled out all stops to contest the outcome in the courts. His legal team, headed by James Baker III,filed a formidable brief presenting 13 grounds for reversing the results. The last was a tag-on urged by Sarah. It claimed that the voting rolls were unconstitutional since Negro voters’ ballots counted as much as Caucasians‘ when in fact a close reading of the Constitution made it clear that the former’s votes should be given a weight only three-fifths that of the latter’s. To support this last contention, the McCain team compiled a dossier of evidence as to the intent of the founders, as well as the intent of those who drafted subsequent amendments. Particularly telling, as subsequent accounts revealed, was the testimony of Daniel Townsend Rutledge, the sole and last surviving descendant of a signer of the Constitution, John Rutledge from South Carolina. Tracked down in a flop house in San Francisco’s tenderloin district , he testified to a family oral tradition that preserved John Rutledge’s account of the Philadelphia proceedings. D.T.’s credibility was not in doubt since the record indicated that he volunteered this crucial; information with no more encouragement than a full bottle of gin and an autographed picture of Sarah in her basketball uniform.
Lucky claim 13 provided the legal basis for the Supreme Court’s 5 to 4 ruling overturning Obama’s seeming victory. Justice Anthony Scalia’s majority opinion went a step further in declaring Latino votes also suspect but withholding judgment until the results of DNA testing were available. Obama’s legal team was handicapped when lead attorney Warren Christopher failed to finish his opening statement until 2 days after the verdict was rendered.
The rioting was horrific. Black America rose up as one. For a week the insurrection had the upper hand. . Army and National Guard units were paralyzed. The situation was saved for the Republicans by the mobilization of its base. Militias were raised from the ranks of the ‘right-to-life’ movement. Armed by the NRA, they fought pitched battles in 50 American cities. Pentecostals formed para-military units, desperate to bring forward Armageddon before the banks foreclosed on their trailer homes. Especially effective around New York were ‘flying squads’ of unemployed hedge fund traders. Their blood-curdling battle cry “DERIVATIVES or DIE’ struck terror in the most valiant of enemies. They were vindictive and brutal – although there is no firm evidence to support reports that they ritually sacrificed underinvested virgins on the steps of the NY Stock Exchange at high noon on December 21. The tide finally turned when a dozen divisions of Kurdish Peshmurga andloyal Afghan troops (Uzbek and Tajiks) were thrown into the battle. Officially, 100,000 were killed but nobody knows for sure. Urban America was wasted. President McCain’s first act upon entering the White House was to launch a massive reconstruction project code-named Mesopotamia in America.
A chastened Barack Obama gave a moving speech to the nation on the eve of the Inauguration. He called on all Americans to set aside their partisan differences at this moment of national crisis and to work together on a nom-partisan basis to heal the country’s wounds. He pledged his full support to McCain whom he recognized as the legitimate President of the United States. No citizen had a right to dispute by extra-legal means a decision of the highest court in the land. He called on his supporters to remain faithful to the cause of Change. “With faith and courage, we yet will win,” he proclaimed. He led the assembled audience in a raucous round of “Yes we can” chants.
Then, fate knocked again. Before Haliburton could grab its first no-bid contracts, a batch of melanoma cells entered John McCain’s bloodstream through a facial lesion. Within three weeks he was gone. Sarah Palin was Presidente of the United States, head of a rump administration. She quickly showed doubters that she had the right stuff. Within hours of being sworn in, and acting under instruction from the Heavenly Father, plucky Sarah appointed Dick Cheney Vice-President, vaunting his sterling record of service to the Republic. Cheney’s advice was blunt: ‘get your ass in gear.” Presidente S liked that. It played to her strength. The country was in peril; The Great Danger was still out there. Survival depended on slaying it. That meant American seizure of Eur-Asia. So grave was the Threat, that the very identity of The Great Danger had to be kept a secret. Only Presidente S and Dick were privy to this ultra-classified information. Thus began the Long March toward building the American Empire in Asia.
Usted Helegu was riveted by the tale. Osman Massoud paused briefly. He then resumed with a summary of the Great Conquest. American firepower, American strategic genius, and the steely dedication born of knowing that they had God on their side produced a string of brilliant victories. Iran was crushed and the Mullahs’ regime fell. Armed units raced across the Afghan border to encircle the Taliban in cauldrons of destruction. Loyal Kurd and Iraqi units filled in behind to organize the rear areas. The Ethiopian brigades too played a key role in the lightening campaigns. The Prester John Legions as they were known. Emboldened by their signal success in storming the Mogadishucentral market -for the11th straight time, these hardened warriors served as shock troops. They won laurels from Kemes to Khandahar to Quetta. Soon, the Hindu Kush – the last redoubts of the bad guys - were in sight. Presidente S had conceived, yet again, an ingenious plan to send 4 armed columns through the Khyber Pass to outflank the enemy in the NorthwestFrontierProvince and the Tribal Areas. It may have worked, even though the road through the pass is one lane. But it was not necessary. Matching audacity with guile, Presidente S came up with a Machiavellian scheme to subvert the Pakistani government. The US had unique leverage on President Zardari. His two psychoanalysts had their offices in Manhattan. By threatening to deny him access, Washington was able to blackmail him into ordering the Pakistani army to stand down long enough for the Americans to gain control of vital communications and transportation hubs. With the assassination of General Kayani, by a long dormant CIA sleeper agent who planted an explosive charge in the general’s swagger stick, resistance crumbled. Some Islamist elements fought on.. But they were forced to retreat toKashmir. When routed there, they took the high pass through Leh in Ladakh into the remote no-man’s land on the Chinese border. In the rugged terrain around Kashgar, they linked up with Uighur guerrillas . From this remote base, they launched a series of daring raids against American forces. Presidente S warned that terrorist acts by these dead-enders were clear evidence that The Great Danger still loomed over America. Avanti!
A series of arduous campaigns led to the incorporation of the Pamirs, the trans-Oxian territories, and – via a dynastic marriage between Presidente S’s granddaughter Algebra and the son of Kazakhstan’s president a much loved gay Sufi poet – the grasslands of Central Asia, too. The contours of the AEA we all know so well were in place.”
A quizzical look came to Helegu Usted’s face: “dad, there’s one thing I never understood, who paid for all of this? I remember reading that the Treasury was empty due to the Bush billionaire building program and the Wall Street follies about that time.”
“You’re right, of course. The Chinese paid for most of it; a few others like Japan and Saudi Arabia chipped in. The money crunch came after Washington agreed to pay the salaries of the auxiliary armies in hard currency rather than dollars. The US already had borrowed huge sums from China in exchange for IOUs backed by sub-prime mortgage securities and the good word of Ben and Hank. This time, the Beijing leaders said they wanted solid collateral. In exchange for a credit line of $4.5 trillion, they demanded a 97 year lease onManhattanIsland. or whatever was left of it after the riots 17 years earlier. Presidente S wasn’t sure it was a good deal, so she consulted with her granddaughters Geometry and Calculus. They were of little help, their hand calculators had crashed simultaneously. Trusting her gut as always, Presidente S placed a call to Alan Greenspan. She caught the still sprightly 104 year old between matches of cut-throat shuffleboard at the Ayn Rand Geriatric Invitational at the Fountainhead Hotel on the boardwalk inMiami Beach. . He advised her to go ahead with the deal. All great countries depend on credit for vital investments, when the economic fundamentals are sound, he explained. So it went through, with Presidente S bargaining shrewdly to get as a sweetener 24 packets of China’s choicest instant noodles.’
“The rest of the story you pretty much know,”
At that moment, a shout went up that land had been sighted. San Francisco lay ahead. The ocean liner Shantung out of Shanghai eased its way into the Bay. It moved slowly to avoid the jagged wreckage of the Golden GateBridge, sticking to the narrow channel. It had been widened just enough to accommodate the steady flow of outbound cargo vessels with grain, timber and ores in their holds.
The passengers disembarked at the main port in Alameda. Passport controls were minimal. None of the retina scans that still were the norm at border crossings back in the Heartland. That did mean a spike in undetected glaucoma. No one gave a damn. Passengers took pedicabs across the derelict BayBridge to San Francisco. They were a mixed bunch – merchants, honorable officials come to administer the vast territory officially called Celestium Occidental, and a host of tourists on package tours to see the fabled Lost Cities of California. San Francisco was a sad shadow of its former self. It had deteriorated badly during the decades of War Capitalism when the American economy gradually collapsed under its mountain of debt. It then was neglected under the new regime. Abandonment was a way of breaking with the indulgent, corrupt past, like the Arabs who by-passed the great capitals of the lands they conquered. to plant Islam’s banner in virgin spiritual territory. SF was home to 80,000 poor souls.
Decadence had given way to dilapidation. The famed cable cars ran no more, their tracks poking through the crumpled asphalt. Splinters of decayed high risers studded the hills. Only CoitTower remained intact. It was meticulously maintained by the Palin familytrust as a symbol of her reign. Its marble sheathing shimmered in the bright sunlight reflecting off the Bay. The tower stood in stark contrast to its grubby surroundings and the weed grown ruins of the city’s other former glories.
Osman and Helegu set out from their lodgings at the Sampan Inn, in the old Ghiradelli chocolate complex. to tour the tragic city. In a section of town called the Barbary Coast. they spied an ancient book store on whose time stained façade they could barely make out the letters: ity L gh.s. It was an Alladin’s cave of memorabilia. They filled their knapsack with a fascinating collection of items: a faded menu from the Mark Hopkins Grillroom, a striking psychedelic poster promoting a Grateful Dead concert at the Fillmore Auditorium, a tattered copy of an odd volume titled “Seven Sure-Fire Ways to Improve Your Memory” by someone called Adolfo Gonzales, a set of brochures touting ARM loans from Countrywide and Washington Mutual banks. The real find was a first edition of the ‘The Decline and Fall of the American Empire” by the renown scholar at SingaporeNationalUniversity, Rabindra Chen. The title confused no one. The American Empire Asia existed in name only. It wasthe residue of the once mighty Imperium ruled from Washington that had stretched from Chesapeake Bay to Sulimeiniyah-. China had sagely decided to retain the name when they took sovereign control. The name America still resonated strongly. So like the Byzantines at Constantinople who called their dominion Rome, so did Beijing see practical value in exploiting so long established a brand name.
America proper had succumbed to Chinese overlords gradually over a period of two decades in the mid 21st century. Starting with the Manhattan Island deal, they gradually had acquired ownership of the commanding heights of the economy along with a few choice lowland sites - starting with the Treasury and Fort Knox whose contents they owned entirely by 2057. The Protectorate was officially established in 2065. Beijing had taken advantage of a diplomatic gaffe to turn the actual into the legal. The cassis bellioccurred in the White House at the weekly meeting between the American Presidente and the Chinese Vice-Regal High Representative. The ill-starred Presidente was Subtraction, granddaughter to Presidente S. In a fit of temper sparked by China’s annexation of the Barrenlands (formerly Alaska), she had carelessly flipped her open lipstick onto his impeccable silk gown. That was excuse enough for the Chinese to move.
It was a bloodless conquest. With sly Oriental cunning, the Chinese chose their moment skillfully.. It was Super Bowl Sunday. With Americans crowed around their Great Wall TVs, the coup went forward stealthily . Most people were not even aware of it for weeks. They stayed glued to their blank screens assuming themselves victims of yet another of the recurring blackouts that added to the misery of life in post-imperial America. Years later, diehard patriots could still be sighted straggling out of their grottoes to haunt the deserted premises of sports bars convinced that the game would resume once the interminable commercial break was over.
Osman and Helegu’s vague recollections of the Happy Events period they studied in school were revived by a perusal of the Chen history. It had cost them next to nothing. The natives, long accustomed to a hand to mouth existence, were glad to accept whatever little income dealing in antiquities provided them. Haggling with shopkeepers was more a matter of custom than a serious commercial activity. Besides, the Yuan made all tourists feel rich. The pair climbed to the crest of Nob Hill. There, amazingly intact, was the imposing building of the Pacific UnionClub. A discreet bronze sign stated that it now was the Sun Yat Sen Institute of High Confucian Studies. Helegu Ustad briefly entertained the thought that this might be a pleasant place to spent a year of post-doc studies.